Prism Blog

As retail evolves, expanding channels and technology present great opportunities — and a lot of pressure — for brands to bring in stronger sales and more loyal customers. But no matter what channels and technologies your stores are adopting, the most important component for success has remained constant and become even more critical. That component? Your customers’ experience with your brand.

Here are a few key points — both on what’s proven to be important to customers, and how to make sure every one of your channels is exceeding expectations.

1. Engagement

Only 13% of employees are engaged in their jobs — but companies with more engaged employees had 22% higher profitability, 10% higher customer ratings and 48% fewer safety accidents. The takeaway? Employee training isn’t just a good idea, it’s essential. Investing in your employees has a direct impact on your success with shoppers. Remember, whether online or in-store, your representatives are the front line for delivering an exceptional experience.

2. Retention

You probably know that it’s much easier to retain a loyal customer than to gain a new one, but did you realize a 10% increase in customer retention levels result in a 30% increase in your company’s value? When upwards of 90% of customers will stop patronizing your stores because they had a negative interaction, and for the few that return, it will take 10 positive experiences to undo the impact of that negative one, that value increase from retention seems even more critical. Every retailer should be absolutely focused on retaining their current customers through positive experiences — in addition to bringing in new shoppers. Speaking of:

3. Service

3 in 5 Americans (59%) would try a new brand or company for a better service experience. That means there’s a huge opportunity to use exceptional service as a make-or-break selling point. Whether on your mobile app, customer support line, or in-store, people remember positive interactions — and their shopping decisions show it.

4. Speed

How many businesses do you know that are strictly brick-and-mortar? In 2015, probably not many. A mobile-optimized website is now practically essential for retailers. But having an online presence isn’t enough — it has to perform well. Retail sites lose 11% of conversion for every 1-second delay in load times. Customer experience online, just like in the store, is about speed of response as well as quality.

5. Rapport

The last fact is often overlooked, but vital to success: Every business is a people business. No matter what your brick-and-mortar or online footprint is, whether you’re a small boutique or a large-scale corporate enterprise, the people you work with, employ, and cater to determine your sales. Whatever your business model, it’s essential to use the technology, data, and staff at your disposal to optimize your customer experience.

Recently there’s been a flurry of summer activity and everyone has been even busier than usual. I was lucky to grab one of our vets for a quick sit down. Brian is one of Prism’s early employees, so it was about time I chatted with him about all the impressive work he’s doing managing our growing partner program!

Favorite Food:

Thai!

Favorite Quote:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” – Wayne Gretzky

What do you do at Prism?

I work with our partners, nationwide and globally, to promote, train and help them sell the Prism solution to our end customers. Additionally, I work with our hardware partners to develop integrated solutions with the Prism software.

What brought you here?

The ability to bring online analytics to an offline environment was really interesting to me. I was drawn in by Prism’s cutting-edge technology and how it helps retailers understand their stores and increase sales.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I like to golf, check out live music, dabble in photography and read.

What’s something people don’t know about you?

I can dance like Justin Timberlake (almost).

What are you most excited about?

I’m excited about all the possibilities ahead of us, about where we can take the Prism technology next. From new hardware integrations to new markets, there are a lot of new opportunities that lay ahead of Prism.

If you were a superhero, what would your power be? Superhuman strength? Bionic vision? Flight?

If you were a retailer, you might answer “being in multiple stores at once”. Having instant visual access to all of your stores is the next best thing. Here’s why:

Easier Audits

For any retailer with more than a single store, staying on top of what’s happening in all of them — simultaneously — is a big challenge. As you add more stores, particularly franchises, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with every store’s presentation and operation. But what happens when you add real-time, remote visual access to every one of your retail locations? The problem of geography disappears. Retailers with visual access to every store can conduct any number of compliance audits, at any time, as often as they need to. . By implementing tools that allow for real-time, remote visual access, any number of compliance audits can be conducted. Are my stores Is every store clean? Do they meet brand compliance standards? Is the right product assortment on display? Whatever the audit question, visual access can deliver answers — with higher frequency and at a lower cost than physical store visits.

Visual Inventory Checks

Today’s consumer demands instant gratification, yet still loves shopping in-store — and that means product availability is more important than ever. While most retailers are already equipped with sophisticated inventory tools, visual access can be a quick, supplementary check on overall inventory levels – allowing for even faster responses. This is especially valuable for quick turnover items such as high-end sweets and beauty products, where inventory missing for any amount of time turns into significant lost profits.

See Merchandising Remotely

For retailers big and small, a huge amount of planning goes into visual merchandising change-outs and new promotional campaigns. Once responsibility is passed to all a retailer’s stores, it’s difficult to confirm the timelines of these rollouts. By using visual access tools, you can quickly confirm day and date releases, creating a consistent brand image across every one of your stores.

You might never have special powers, but you can be in two places at once. Use visual access tools to close the geography gap and improve brand standards, compliance and daily operations — and be a retail superhero.

History is being written. This season marks the first time the Warriors have been in the NBA Finals since 1975, and the first time the Cavaliers have won a single Finals game in franchise history. With recent advancements in technology, the NBA has evolved into a visual production that’s more than back-breaking dunks and laser guided 3-pointers.

Since the 2013-2014 NBA season, every NBA arena has been equipped with groundbreaking player tracking technology, SportVU. Using a system of cameras, which can identify NBA players by jersey number, every single detail about how a player moves — from speed to number of dribbles — is recorded. Studying this data, teams can devise effective methods of counterplay.

Prior to this system, Basketball coaches and trainers had to rewatch old recordings for hours, cataloguing the data manually. Now, technology has streamlined and transformed this process, even to the level of granularity that determines specific player tendencies. In this day and age, basketball wins are no longer strictly determined by player talent, but also require extensive research and data analysis on opposing teams. Similarly, visual analysis is applied to businesses that relied on intuition in the past. Technology, like Prism’s pathmaps and heatmaps, is the new way to deliver critical information for business owners, turning space optimization and sales strategy into a data-driven issue. The visual summarization of customer behavior has become crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of brick-and-mortar stores.

Visual analytics have spread beyond engineering labs and entered fields never before imagined. With the explosive push of automation and the Internet of Things, it’s time to stop thinking that big data is a thing of the future.

Big data may be the key behind determining this year’s NBA champions. At the very least, visual big data is already proving critical for today’s decision making — in businesses and on the hardwood.

2) You love a dress (or dress jacket) you found online, and you know your size, but you don’t know if it will look good on your frame.

3) You’re grocery shopping and you’re pretty strict when it comes to what produce you pick out.

That’s specialty retail, department stores, and supermarkets in one fell swoop. How is Amazon’s Same-Day Delivery going to help you with any of the above situations?

The truth is, Amazon’s move is groundbreaking, and it will certainly force certain subsets of retail to change and adapt the way they do business. Amazon’s “instant gratification” strategy will both improve their customers’ experience and put direct pressure on retailers who are dragging their feet when it comes to integrating new IoT shopping strategies. But it’s not going to own retail, and it certainly won’t end it.

Walmart, Google, and eBay have dabbled in same day delivery and fallen short. In the coming months, they’ll need to improve their infrastructure and inventory in order to compete with Amazon, or find themselves losing customers left and right.

For countless other retailers, however, this is just another chance for them to differentiate their business through a strong brick-and-mortar experience. Companies like Etsy, Bonobos, and Google haven’t been branching into the realm of physical stores because they’re coming to an end. They’ve recognized that the experience of shopping in-store is crucial to the majority of consumers, and that creating a presence on high street or in malls delivers new possibilities to craft specialized customer experiences and drive stronger sales.

So, kudos to Amazon for breaking new ground in retail, and for doing it well. But as for owning retail? Well, we’re not quite there yet.

With these shifting rules of retail, solutions like iBeacon are just the start of store innovation. Whether it’s marketing, merchandising, or operations, merchants are changing how they create the best customer experience.

Here are the key online, mobile, and brick-and-mortar retail trends we expect to see more of in the coming months:

1. More tech in-store

Sensors will become increasingly embedded throughout retail stores so that shoppers can interact with shelves, signs, and displays using their Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices. In a similar vein, augmented reality like virtual fitting rooms, furniture visualizers, and interactive window displays will grow in popularity because of AR’s hands-on way of capturing customer attention.

2. Retailers diversify offerings

We’ve recently seen a handful of ecommerce-first businesses like Amazon, Zappos, and Google open physical stores. This is hardly surprising since 92% of retail purchases still happen offline (according to Forrester). But in order to beat out the competition, new brick-and-mortar retailers will need to focus on differentiating their in-store customer experience. Ted Baker’s grooming rooms and Urban Outfitter’s rooftop restaurant are perfect examples of how retailers will continue to beef up their offerings with experiential services.

3. Athleisure apparel is on the rise

Bloomberg Intelligence predicts that “the lack of a major new fashion trend will likely prevent a sales surge” for apparel retailers’ sales in 2015. But the one area where profit margins are high is the athleisure department. The research firm NPD Group estimates that 49 percent of activewear isn’t purchased for active uses, so the workout-to-workplace movement is definitely up-and-coming.

4. Big data will get bigger

E-commerce won’t be the only ones leveraging shopper analytics. Physical retailers have realized the increasingly critical role advanced analytics has on design, store planning, and staffing optimization. Fortunately, innovative tools like heatmaps and traffic pathmaps give retailers the insights they need to make smart, data-driven business decisions.

Looks like the rest of 2015 will be predictably customer-centric. As retailers fight for consumer attention in a saturated market, redefining the shopper experience will be the key to success.

Designing a store from every display to every shelf and window is an intense process. It’s even harder if you’re trying to do it without data to back your decisions up.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you design your brick-and-mortar business — and a couple tips for using data-driven merchandising to improve your store performance.

1. Be Conscious of Color

It might sound like a bold style choice to do a single tone window or in-store display, but it simply ends up looking washed out. The same goes for adding too many colors or display elements: too much clutter makes it hard to know where to look. Instead, craft your displays with one or two focal points that really pop and draw attention.

2. Execution is Ongoing

No, it’s not enough to have an incredibly constructed promo display. If there’s dust and dirt on your shelves and mannequins a week into your sale, the message couldn’t be clearer to customers — you just don’t care. Keep an eye on the compliance of your displays and merchandise with remote images of your store, and make audit checklists for managers to help communicate the global brand standards.

3. Keep an Eye on Height

The first good rule of thumb is to keep your showcase products around eye level. The second is to stagger their height. For example, have a big display table, but make sure to give it levels of product to help draw attention. If you don’t think some of your merchandise is getting enough attention, see how much it’s picked up with a product heatmap and A/B test using different display heights.

4. Evaluate Inside and Outside the Store

It’s important to understand both the customers who enter your store and those who pass on by. Is window display A or B more effective at capturing customers? Do themed displays draw in shoppers better than plain promotions? Monitor traffic levels outside your retail locations with pathmaps, and see the exact percentages of people who pass by versus entering the store throughout the day.

5.Understand Customer Movement

What’s the value in a beautiful display if no one sees it? Use floor heatmaps to understand the high-traffic zones in your store — where shoppers are naturally inclined to visit — so you can back up your hot product placement with real customer data.

We’ve recently welcomed a few new engineers to our growing team, included Ben Kremer, all-star developer and entrepreneur! I got to chat with him about his interests, background, and drive to learn more. But first, the important things:

Favorite food:

Chicken and Waffles.

Favorite Quote:

Don’t let school get in the way of your education.— Samuel Clemens

What’s your role at Prism?

I’m on the backend engineering team, so I work on improving features and fixing bugs for the web side of the product.

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on building out some of the current and upcoming features in the app, and fixing bugs for new pushes. Without getting too specific, I’m blocking out some backend functionality and making strategic improvements to the customer experience.

What drew you to Prism?

The concept of the product is really interesting and innovative! It struck me as both a cool use of existing technology and the chance to help create a really interesting, exciting new product. The stack that Prism uses and the emphasis of this particular role on Django and Python was also a big draw for me, personally.

What aspects of your job at Prism do you like best?

I enjoy the languages and stack I’m working with, and learning the expanse of the existing code base. I also really enjoy the size of this team, that we’re growing, and how close knit the group is in this really incredible office space. And the perks are great too — who wouldn’t love daily bacon?

What do you like to do outside of work?

I love traveling and taking trips. I really enjoy hiking and exploring the great outdoors, live music, and checking new restaurants out.

What’s your background outside of Prism?

I was a frontend web developer, freelance, for a long time, building websites for small clients. I always wanted to be a part of something bigger, and that precipitated my search for a position that was more removed from freelance, was part of the start-up industry, and was backend specific, so I could increase my knowledge of languages (python specifically). Prism fit the bill perfectly!

We’ve got to agree — Prism is a pretty great place to learn while you contribute. We’re excited to have Ben on the team!

The face of retail is changing rapidly. But sometimes, the exact stats can be surprising. When you’re determining how to make your business more data-driven and omnichannel friendly, make sure to keep these 2015 trends and figures in mind.

1. The average consumer now uses a total of five devices to make an in-store purchase. That’s a big jump from the average 2.8 devices used in 2014. Whether they’re on their mobile, tablet, laptop, smartwatch, or in-store kiosk, customers are staying connected.

2. Though every shopper is going mobile, that doesn’t mean stores are falling by the wayside. In fact, even when it comes to reading up on the products they’re interested in, 53% of consumers still prefer to research their buy while in store.

3. 62% of smartphone users report that they would be willing to use their devices to pay in-store. With products like Square, Cash, and Apple Pay, this year could be a perfect opportunity for retailers to streamline their checkout process by enabling mobile payments.

4. Only 12% of shoppers feel like in-store sales associates are critical touchpoints in their shopping experience. Since fewer customers are relying on retail staff for shopping help, this could be a chance to reallocate staff to maintaining in-store compliance and branding, and enabling mobile checkouts.

5. No matter where shoppers go, peer pressure is present — and a powerful influence on choice. 66% of shoppers read reviews while browsing only, and 36% read them while buying in-store. If your products don’t have a space for customer reviews yet, it might be time to change that or see your sales suffer.

Some changes in retail are intuitive — as millennials take on a larger retail market-share and mobile continues to gain steam, a slow transformation is bound to take place. But every now and then, the truth can be surprising — and that’s when it’s most important to adopt new retail technologies in order to stay competitive.